Schubert's The Trout (new English translation by me)

Soooooooooooo yes, we are starting our first MELISANDE sing-through tonight, I am very excited, but before we get to all of that I wanted to let you know that if I don't make it as a musical theater composer I might be able to set myself a side hustle writing new English translations of classic art songs.

Because the Unitarians asked me to sing Schubert's Die Forelle, aka "The Trout," and I looked at the German original and the various English translations and I said "nope, I'm doing my own."

So I did.

(I also reinstated the last verse, you know, the one that Schubert and Schubart cut.)

As far as I understand copyright and public domain, I have the legal right to rewrite these lyrics and I can give you the right to sing them whenever and wherever you want, Creative Commons and all of that. If you are printing some program for some recital or Unitarian church service or whatever, you could credit Nicole Dieker Finley as the translator, but honestly I don't care.

Here are the lyrics, and here is a video of me singing them:

I walked beside the water

And saw a pretty little trout

I stopped my walk to watch

As it swam and and swam about

It moved as swift as an arrow

The water was so clear

The trout and I were happy

To be together here

And then an angler joined us

He dropped his line into the brook

I watched his forehead crinkle

Impatiently he looked

At the trout, who swam around

As calmly as it had swum before

The water was so clean

That the trout ignored the lure

The anglerman grew angry

He kicked the bank

And made the water get all muddy

He laughed as my heart sank

And soon it was all over

The trout, my happy little friend

Deceived by something evil

And hooked, and dead, the end

There is a final verse

And it used to offer some advice

To girls who might meet men

Like the angler, who aren’t so nice

But let me extrapolate the metaphor

Watch out for those who blur what’s true

By muddying reality

They’re dangling lures for you